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The first mobile WiMAX products are scheduled to be rolled out late this year or very early in 2007—so if you haven't done some research into this interesting technology already it's time to start.
Designed from the beginning to connect to the IP network, mobile WiMAX offers low latency and high Quality of Service (QoS). It will have no difficulty accessing IP multimedia data or implement technologies such as VoIP. This is the basic argument driving the mobile WiMAX campaign for market acceptance.
In the ever widening world of wireless technologies, mobile WiMAX is aimed at a very lucrative market: the delivery of high-data bandwidth digital data streaming off the IP network. In other words, the much-talked-about delivery of mobile services.
Cellular, Wi-Fi and even Bluetooth through its relationship with Ultrawideband (UWB) also have designs on the multimedia services market. While there is still some question as to whether there is room for still another wireless technology, WiMAX has a good story to tell.
Mobile WiMAX can be embedded on any number of personal devices such as PDAs, notebook PCs, game consoles, iPods, MP3 players, and cellular phones. As such, its potential to compete with cellular technology is obvious, particularly for broadband, data-centric applications.
WiMAX and cellular
But mobile WiMAX may also co-exist with cellular technology. WiMAX is not optimized to carry circuit-switched voice traffic. From the WiMAX perspective, voice is a far more appropriate application for cellular technology.
The problem with that scenario from the cellular perspective is that the expected growth in mobile revenue is in the data segment. Between 2004 and 2008, a 20% CAGR is forecast for mobile data while revenue for mobile voice traffic is actually expected to drop by a few percent over the same period. Voice revenues will still be almost double data in 2008 but the trend is clear.
The single most important technology advantage that mobile WiMAX has over 2G and 3G cellular is its adoption of Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access (OFDMA) multiplexing. OFDMA works well in multipath environments and is cost effective for network operators because it has higher performance and gives them more flexibility in managing spectrum resources.
Mobile WiMAX performance is typically compared to 3G technologies such as EVDO (Evolution Data Optimized) and HSDPA (High Speed Downlink Packet Access), and HSUPA. Depending on system configuration, mobile WiMAX has a clear performance edge.
In terms of net throughput per channel, mobile WiMAX delivers between 50% and 3X greater bandwidth, the greatest differential coming in a WiMAX system with a two-antenna MIMO (Multiple In Multiple Out) implementation.
The WiMAX Forum published the data on which this comparison is based. The information is shown in Figure 1. MIMO is just as applicable to cellular technology but has not been implemented as yet.
Click here for Figure 1
Figure 1: Mobile WiMAX beats 3G cellular in data bandwidth.
The cellular industry is, of course, not standing still. The Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) has incorporated it in its LTE (Long Term Evolution) specification. Another indication is that Qualcomm, ever a dominant player in the cellular market, last year signaled its interest in OFDMA by acquiring Flarion, a company that had developed an excellent OFDMA technology.
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